Evolution of Ethical Considerations in Public Administration.
Public Administration in the earliest decades avoided problems of morality or ethics (Waldo, 1074). However, since the late 1960s, considerations of morality or ethics have been creeping into the public administration literature particularly the “new” public administration literature (Marini, 1971). There are many reasons for this development. First, is the recognition of the fact that a policy matter is inevitable a matter of
In
another development, with the tremendous expansion of the public policy arena,
two major problems with significant ethical dimensions emerge:
1.
With
the increase in the scope and depth of governmental activity, the decision making
process has become more complex. Hence, public administrators have increasingly
encountered difficulty in making appropriate choices, particularly, appropriate
ethical choices
2.
Another problem is that the more the expansion
of governmental activity, the more public policy has shifted from the direct
control of the people, elected representatives and the law. The bureaucrats become
very powerful. The question then arises in a system where non elected officials
possess increasing amounts of power and authority, how do we ensure that these
make rational and morally responsible judgments?
Furthermore,
the development of ethical considerations in public administration was due to
the abandonment of the politics/administration dichotomy or facts-value
dichotomy. Under positivism facts-value dichotomy, only technical decisions
about the instrumental relationship of means to ends lends themselves to the
rules of rational assessment. Value judgments, as decisions about which ends or
goals to choose, are considered beyond the reach of scientific methodology and therefore,
must be relegated to philosophy and metaphics (Fischer, 1983). It is worthy of
note that facts-value separation is traced to the man known for his antique of
bureaucratic rationality, Max Weber. Weber mutually developed the facts value dichotomy
as a guard against technocratic encroachment (Simey, 1968). Troubled about the
increasing power of bureaucracy under Bismarck, Weber contended that values were
too important to be left in the hands of the technocracy. Dichotomy between
empirical and normative discourse and facts-value were necessary to check the
increasing power of the bureaucracy. With the abandonment of facts-values or
politics/administration dichotomy and the recognition of politics and administration
interaction, there is an implicit recognition of the relevance of ethics in
public administration. It becomes imperative for the public administrator to
make decisions not only on the traditional bases of efficiency, economy, and administrative
principles, but on the more agonizing criteria of morality as well. The issue of
public interest has, therefore, become paramount in public policy making.
In
Nigeria, ethical considerations emerged, with the entrapment of civilian
democracy in 1979. This became necessary because of increased corruption among
the ruling class, and the bureaucrats. Such agencies like Economic and
Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) established in 2002, code of conduct Bureal,
Public Complaints Commission, incorporated in the 1990 Laws of the Federation,
Independent Corrupt Practices and other Related offences Commission (ICPC) in
2000 and Budget Monitoring and Price Intelligence Unit (BMPIU) in 2001, are
institutional mechanisms put in place by Nigerian government for enforcing ethical
behavior in Nigeria Public Administration.
No comments:
Post a Comment